it was the employee dropping off the tapes... or the cleaners or the office dog. I hope they have a stronger case than that.

So why didn't he just copy the tapes twice - once to the official copy, and again to his own tapes? His employees would be none the wiser until the banks determine which companies all the victims have in common.

That doesn't make sense - why steal a physical tape when it would have been easier just to make an extra copy?.

um...why would he want to steal the actual tape which someone would notice is missing(duh), and so get found out, and have to go into hiding forever after an international arrest warrant is issued, when he could have just make a copy of it and no one would have known??????? something smells fishy here....

paris cause....that fishy smell again......

Mr Belmonte is an IT exec and hence completely clueless when it comes down to such tecnicalities as duplicating data on a tape.

The lost tape was found under a seat of a commuter train.

It was with some misplaced top secret anti-terrah files.....

Simple answer - he accidentally used one of the originals as the target for one of the copies. It's not missing, just overwritten, and sent off with the other copies.

Never attribute to malice that which can be better explained by stupidity.